HPCwire: Bigger and Better, International Supercomputing Conference Moves to Hamburg

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March 25, 2009

Bigger and Better, International Supercomputing Conference Moves to Hamburg

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Back in 1986 -- at the dawn of the modern supercomputing era -- Professor Hans Werner Meuer, then director of the computer center and professor for computer science at the University of Mannheim (Germany) co-founded and organized the "Supercomputer Seminar" to provide a forum for people interested in HPC, encouraging them to exchange professional and personal ideas and experiences. From those early beginnings, the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) has evolved over the years into a world-renowned event, featuring a prestigious HPC exhibition and world-class conference program drawing expert speakers, exhibitors, researchers, IT managers and students from all over the world, thus providing a unique platform for connecting the HPC community on a global scale.

In 1993 Professor Meuer started the TOP500 project together with Erich Strohmaier (previously at the University of Mannheim, now at NERSC at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and Jack Dongarra (University of Tennessee and ORNL). Now a closely watched document, the TOP500 list ranks the most powerful computers in the world by their performance running the Linpack benchmark. The list is generated and released twice a year, in June at the International Supercomputing Conference and again in November at the IEEE-ACM SC Conference in the US.

The ISC, along with the SC conference in the US, is the most important supercomputing event in the world. After starting with 81 participants in Mannheim, the event eventually outgrew that city and moved to Heidelberg for five years, from 2001-2005. Due to significant gains in the number of attendees and the size and number of exhibits, the conference once again had to find a bigger venue, and moved to Dresden in 2006. After three years in the center of "Silicon Saxony," ISC is now moving to Hamburg, Germany's "Gateway to the world" and a leading center for aeronautics, technology, media and global industries ranging from energy to consumer products.

When ISC'09 convenes June 23-26 in the Congress Center Hamburg, organizers of the 24th ISC meeting are expecting more than 1,500 participants and about 120 exhibitors from around the world. As final preparations are being made, Prof. Meuer took a break from his duties as general conference chair and provided the following interview to HPCwire.

HPCwire: What are the reasons for moving ISC from Dresden to Hamburg?

Prof. Meuer: We held ISC in Dresden for the past three years, and we were very successful there. For example, in 2008 we had 1,375 participants -- more than twice as many as attended ISC 2005, our last year in Heidelberg. The main reason for relocating to Hamburg this year was the lack of space for our constantly expanding exhibition. Through the art of improvisation, we were able to squeeze more exhibitors into the space in Dresden from 2007 to 2008. But for ISC'09, we wanted to be able to accommodate the space requests from both our existing and potential exhibitors. So, after three great years in Dresden we find ourselves in Hamburg, where we will most likely stay for the next two years as well.

HPCwire: You'll be in Hamburg for 2010 and 2011. Since ISC is THE HPC conference for Europe, have you thought about holding it in another country after 24 years in Germany?

Prof. Meuer: This is a good question, as somewhat more than two-thirds of all our attendees are from Europe. However, since Germany has the lion's share with 36 percent of all participants, that also speaks to remaining in Germany. However, the US is in second place in number of attendees at 23 percent and the UK is third with 10 percent. We are thinking very hard about the idea of holding ISC 2012 somewhere else in Europe, perhaps Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Barcelona.

HPCwire: What are the most important changes associated with the move to Hamburg?

Prof. Meuer: First and foremost, the conference will take place over four days, from Tuesday through Friday, and attendees can register separately for the days that interest them. We have also changed our long-standing approach of having a single-track program and instituted a limited number of parallel sessions in order to better accommodate our attendees' wide-ranging interests.

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